Much like Manal, Ayesha also teaches me what it is to accept life’s curveballs, move forward, and fly in the face of stares and stigmas with a huge smile and an upbeat attitude.
“I thought it was going to be weird and scary. At first, I was scared with everyone looking at me,” noted Ayesha, who had just turned nine and was burned almost into oblivion in blood-spattered Idlib when she was only four. But I learned never to judge a book by its cover. Be kind, and don’t judge.”
Ayesha’s memories of Syria are fractured. She relives a feeling of constant exhaustion, of feeling unsafe, and then those moments before the injury. Her thoughts shift to the aftermath, the vision of displaced persons flooding over Turkey’s border and back into Syria, even while the conflict peaked.
But even after endless painful and traumatic surgeries, Ayesha sits in bed with her schoolbooks and shrugs.
“Never give in, never give up,” she stresses, scrolling through her toddler photographs — evidence of the life “before.” “Even when you think hope is lost, it will be back in you.”
Nothing is permanent, I think to myself. We may not be able to alter the experience of what has happened to us, but sunshine eventually casts aside even the gloomiest days. If we are willing to ride it out, the prospect of betterment always returns.
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Words that Never Leave You: “Never give in, never give up. You have to have hope for a better tomorrow.”